I was somewhat otherwise occupied this past weekend, and so did not get many chances to partake in the Thunderdome that is currently Delve. Things were clearly going on, Jabber was lit up quite frequently with fleet requests, enough so that even on my limited time budget I found a couple of opportunities.
Shipping Shipping
One of the first things I did was get my alt out in Jita and buy up some things I thought I might need for the war. The war is new and the supply of ships and consumables has not caught up with the demands of a few hundred pilots arriving wanting to fight and replace losses. Wars depend on logistics in EVE as in the real world. Some contracts for key ships were starting to show up, but I sent myself a few hulls, fittings, and a supply of ammunition and such from Jita via one of our coalition haulers just to make sure I things on hand while the supply chain was ramping up… and to ensure I didn’t have to pay some of the highway robbery prices that sometimes show up before the market stabilizes.
Shipping is actually a bit pricey because the shippers all work out of Jita by default, and F2O is a long way from Jita. An Amarr to Delve run would cut off a couple of jumps, but it is off the trade route. Jita owns it all in that regard.
Win Fleet
I didn’t just get pipe-bombed over the weekend. I did manage to get into one fleet that had a good run. There was a call up for a Harpy fleet to go catch some Northern Coalition Caracals that were roaming nearby. We managed to catch them near the gate in FWST-8 where we tore them apart. [Link points in the right direction now.] It took us a bit to start breaking their tanks as their logi seemed to be quite on the ball, but we hung on until they started to fall. This was helped by the fact that their choice of weaponry, heavy assault missiles, was sub-optimal for damaging wee frigates, so our own logistics were able to keep up. A fleet of Ruptures dropped in towards the end, which makes the odds look more heavily weighted in our favor than they were for most of the fight. Only the last few kill mails show any Ruptures involved, and the Ishtars on the chart were doing something else in system, so we were not blobbing as much as that report might indicate.
I also saw my first Nugoeihuvi Edition Caracal during the fight.
NC Caracal Fleet
So somebody is buying those custom ship skins. I might do so as well if they were available for any ship I happened to fly regularly.
Anyway, that was a short, sharp fleet battle that at least put me on a few more kill mails.
Stood Down Fleets
I also managed to get online and into a few fleets that ended up being stood down. You still get a participation link for such fleets… they also serve who only sit and wait on a titan… but we don’t log in just for participation links. We log in to shoot stuff.
One fleet stood down as an opportunity passed. Just the nature of fleets in motion. We got on and undocked only to find that the foes had other business to attend to.
Another was stood down for lack of booster ships in the fleet. I am still training the skills to be able to fill that role, but that goal is still a good 120 days off, so I will probably be good for the next war unless the summer in Delve lasts into winter.
And the final fleet I was in that stood down was over position. Black Legion was in system with us and neither side would put themselves at a disadvantage just to get the fight started. They wouldn’t come to us and we wouldn’t go to them. So we hung around on the station undock for a while before calling it quits. That is one of the problems with this not being a sovereignty war, your fleet can stand down without any loss. There is no moment of truth where everybody has to either show up or lose their work. Timers suck, but they do bring people to battle.
The Mittani Resurgent
Not actually Delve related, but something that seemed to come up this past weekend. The Mittani (the person, not the site), who has been, outside of GSF CEO updates, rather neutral in tone of late… well, neutral in tone for him… on The Mittani (the site, not the person) has suddenly come alive.
There was the announcement of a new regular feature by him, followed up by a column on the new player experience and what CCP ought to consider doing. That got a lot of reaction, in part because his ideas probably weren’t what you might expect. That in turn was followed by a another promised regular feature called Mittens’ Mailbox where he answers question sent to him or that come up in comments on his posts. The first one had all the dirt you could want, including how TEST’s own intel was compromised during the Fountain War last year, how often he logs into the game, and who the enemies of the CFC really are. Even if you hate him and rage at all his says, it is good stuff, the sort of thing that keeps the meta game spinning.
Addendum: And he is on a roll, with the next topic on the null sec stagnation front.
Addendum 2: Just in case you haven’t gotten enough of The Mittani, there is also an interview with him about getting into EVE and starting TMC posted over at Pollen.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 